Denis Diderot has a name resonant of The Beano, but was actually an eighteenth century French bloke, who got himself into various spots of bother with his tendency to be outspoken about such diverse areas of thought as free will and shopping.
Denis (and this is what attracts our attention to him here) pondered, in his philosophical way, about the ‘fourth wall’ that is figuratively in place between stage performers and their audience. The invisible yet tangible division betwixt us ‘down here’ and them ‘up there’, and vice-versa of course, if we wish to plant ourselves amongst the talent.
The fourth wall needs to both exist and not exist. If we place ourselves back into the audience again, we outnumber the actors, singers or dancers, often by several thousand to one, so it’s important that there is an unseen barrier, beyond which, we don’t venture. Otherwise, there would have to be a moat, or an electrified fence, at the Royal Opera House.
However, as an audience, we equally have to forget that wall, because the performers are doing all they can to pull us into the action; to suspend belief, and engineer our thoughts to the point of acceptance in our minds, that we are involved; that we believe in what we see.
Unforeseen events – a piece of scenery falls, a prop fails, a mobile phone rings – can shatter the fragile crystal of illusion, but, in the arts, and thus in life, we are in an age of change (as politicians are keen to remind us), and so, both those ‘up there’ and us ‘down here’ are transforming the way we react to a performance.
In the Independent this week, Victoria Summerley reviewed ‘Love Never Dies', the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Despite sitting in the most expensive (an eye-popping sixty quid each) seats, she spent much of her time, craning her neck sideways, to try and see what was happening on the higher areas of the stage. At The Adelphi, the dress circle stretches itself out over half of the stalls, so denying the top price seats any sort of view of the top half of the stage. Now you and I might assume, that someone ‘up there’ would have checked that we ‘down here’ could actually see the Phantom’s fairground in Coney Island, but perhaps we have moved into a RyanAir age of performance. A ‘What You See Is What You Get’, and don’t slam the door as you leave.
For Victoria Summerley and her daughter, the fourth wall was not so much an illusion, more the floor of the dress circle.
In our rocky/poppy world of music, the rules have been written on the hoof, a joint effort between us (in the manège) and them (in the saddle). Between us, we may have got it wrong.
If I pop along to see Love’s Labour’s Lost, I certainly don’t expect the King of Navarre to turn to us ‘down here’, and exhort us to join in with his oath to forswear the company of ladies. I think I speak for all of us if I say we wouldn’t know where to look for awkwardness. The fourth wall exists here, for Shakespearean actors to maintain their place, and us to know ours.
Equally, if I toddle along to see Lady Gaga, N-Dubz or Mott The Hoople, I want them to leave that element, those bricks of the fourth wall, right in place.
Prince gets it right. When he took over the O2 Arena for a season, a couple of years ago, he performed; we watched, listened, and applauded enthusiastically. The wall was there in a good way.
Paul McCartney gets it wrong. ‘Hey Jude’ is, for my generation, as much an iconic piece of music as was Beethoven’s Fifth, Mozart’s Fortieth, and Spem in Alium, for those of earlier ages. I won’t sing-a-long-a Thomas Tallis, and I don’t want Paul to be adopting a pantomime approach to my
Beatle hymns.
“Now just the girls!” says Paul at the ‘na na na na na na na’ bit, “Now just the fellas – now all together!”
No, Paul. The wall has come down in a bad way.
We share the blame. We treat the process of going to see live entertainment as an extension of lolling on the sofa at home, and nipping out to the kitchen for a quick raid on the fridge.
At the same Paul McCartney and Prince gigs (both at the O2 Arena), I was stunned by the constant flow of people up and down the stairs, not before, but during the shows. Instead of being accompanied by rapt attention, Paul’s sensitive treatment of ‘Let It Be’ was overshadowed by the sight of dozens and dozens of gig-goers scuttling away, and then returning with heavy loads of burritos, and cardboard trays of iced Southern Comfort.
We’re only a drumbeat away from Springsteen’s ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’ being drowned by the sound of bullhorn carrying waitresses yelling out “Who ordered the Buffalo wings?”
Maybe we have already gone too far down the (Thunder) road. It’s possible that there’s no way back now. Or maybe it’s time for change. Time for a coalition of understanding between performers and audience. Entertain me; don’t expect me to provide my own amusement; don’t ask me to join in. You’re up there. I’m down here. Ask Denis Diderot. He knew.
Terence Dackombe, April 2010
